Flash Lite database application - help needed

Dear all,

I would like to ask for your help/opinion.

I am a beginner Flash Lite programmer. I am planning to create a Flash Lite application that will provide information on current cultural events (e.g. music, theatre), cinema listings, restaurant recommendations etc.

For this, I need to have a database on my server, which will store all the data (e.g for a music event I need the place, artist name, date and time, description of event, contact details, and maybe an image).

I then want to transfer the data (only the updates) to my users' mobile phones, and store them there. This will allow them to update and then be able to browse the information offline.

I am not sure how to do this. I read about Shared Objects, but it seems that these objects do not provide enough space for what I need to do (let's say 1000 records at least at any one time).

Can anyone provide any direction on how to solve this problem? Just to recap, I am looking for a solution to create a Flash Lite database application that will receive cumulative updates from a web server and store the data locally on the mobile.

Thanks in advance for any kind of help you can give me!

Andreas

shared objects are the only native means of storing offline data. Some platforms like Nokia s60 would also allow Flash Lite to interface with another application like C++ or Java to store and retreive more information. These are alternative ways to store data, but only work on some platforms and would be platform dependent solutions.

Thanks a lot for the info hp3 - disappointed to hear the facts, but it saved me a lot of time looking for other solutions.

I would like to ask a couple more questions, if you/anyone else knows:

1. what is the maximum size of each shared object allowed?

2. what is the maximum size of shared objects allowed?

3. can you perform incremental updates on shared objects, and not fully replace them each time you update?

Thanks again
Andreas

I think these are rather small, like 4k.

One nice thing about a shared object is that you can save data in a native format like an array or an object. So you should be able to incrementally add elements to an array stored in the shared object.

I seem to recall developer documents at Adobe that explain in more detail how to use shared objects, if you havent read them already.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/?promoid=DJHBU

Thanks a lot hp3!

Take care
moisis

Hello Moisis,

I have a few things to say here, may be a bit late, but will help others....Recently hp3 also has helped me to achieve such kind of task.

As per me, if we cut down your tasks to shorter modules then,

1. Create a database on some online server - Can be done easily
2. Create a FlashLite SWF which will reside on users mobile device - Quite easy
3. Communicate the information from server to FlashLite SWF - How?

Its been long since you have asked this question...Can you please help us know how have you solved this issue....what steps have you taken. From my experience I have established a communication between database on a server and FlashLite SWF on a mobile device using LoadVars() class and PHP.

Hey Vinayak,

I have not yet proceeded with implementing any solution.

My (still unsolved) problem is that I need to load the data in my application, but I need it to be saved locally and persistently.
Apparently Flash cannot do that - what a disappointment..

Flash can do it with the help of one of following options:
- shared Objects
- Janus Flash (you can read and write text files on mobile)

I think you have max these two options and you need to select one!